


Let The Rain Wash Away Your Tears

by youcanTry



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Batfam fluff, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Jack and Janet's A+ Parenting, The Waynes are Good Bros, Tim Drake Angst, Tim Drake-centric, poor timmy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 12:48:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18620950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcanTry/pseuds/youcanTry
Summary: Timothy Drake-Wayne visits his parents' grave on the day they died.





	Let The Rain Wash Away Your Tears

**Author's Note:**

> (so we're just gonna pretend that the Drakes both coincidentally died on the same day, k:)  
> I was in for some good Wayne family feels, so here y'all go  
> Warning: unrepetenant fluff at the end  
> Enjoy:)

Tim could feel the cold seep into his clothes as finally reached the two headstones. The flowers in his hand were shaking as he kneeled down, placing the peonies(white, his mother’s favorite) against the stone, and daisies(he remembered his father tucking the bright yellow flowers behind his mother’s ear with a soft smile) against the other.

 

He could taste the salt on his lips, and he brushed it away along with the raindrops. Turning around, Tim tipped his head back against his mother, tracing the words engraved on her stone. _Janet Drake, loving wife and mother._

 

The bubble of laughter was drowned out by a roll of thunder,  _because she was so much more than that_. Janet had never been a good mother, running off across the world, leaving her only son behind in an empty house. Tim still remembered the fights she and Jack had, voices echoing as he’d climbed up to the roof to try and find a familiar silence.

 

Janet had been ruthless, cold and as sharp as a blade, rising to power in a male-dominated field. She’d worn lipstick as red as blood and kept her nails sharp enough to pierce skin when she gripped your arm too hard, as she taught him all the ways he could bring a man down to his knees with words encased in ice and a frosted stare.

 

Her marriage had been a stepping stone, a means to an end. Her child had been for a legacy, and she’d given him everything she was capable of. Time? No. Love? Never.

 

But even when she was half-way across the world, her presence lingered in the cold of Drake Manor. Words whispering in his ear( _Stand up straight, Timothy, don’t smile so big, Timothy, be more silent, Timothy_ ), teaching him how to build his own empire, and if he couldn’t, then to take it from someone else( _people will always find a way to underestimate you, child. But that’s okay, you can use it to your advantage. Twist their words against them, and show them what it means to be the son of Janet Drake_ ).

 

She was the first person to teach him how to use a mask, how to put on a smile and light up your eyes with a childhood innocence he’d never had, how to shape his lips into a smirk that could haunt nightmares, how to seem that he wore his heart on his sleeve, or to appear as closed off as a block of ice.

 

And Tim had listened. He’d forced his way into Batman’s life, taken whatever he could, and then never left. Carved a place for himself with a frozen dagger and a thin smile. When everyone had believed he was crazy for believing Bruce was alive, he’d proven them wrong, changed his mask from a hopeful young boy to a broken man, one with blood on his hands and a silver tongue hidden behind a knife-like smile.

 

Tim shifted as the rain continued to mingle with something that definitely wasn’t tears, and he buried his hand in the wet mud next to his mother’s grave. The day of her funeral hadn’t been rainy or gray. No, it was a perfect, sterile white( Tim tried not to look too hard at the peonies). The snow had caused some complications with the burial, and Tim remembered standing in the ice, the absence of his father’s hand heavy on his shoulder. It had almost seemed like she was saying goodbye( _life is not kind, Timothy. Best to learn that now.)_

 

He remembered going to the hospital later that day, the nurses giving pitying looks to the little boy in a dripping suit clutching his comatose father’s hand. He remembered the hope he’d felt once he’d woken up. When he’d started seeing Dana, started getting better.

 

Tim snorted, running his fingers across the wet stone of his father’s grave. None of those memories overshadowed the feeling of rushing down the stairs to his step-mother’s screaming and finding his dad lying in a pool of blood with a boomerang in his chest and a gun in his hand.

 

His funeral had been simple, not a picture of wealth like his mother's. Tim was the only Drake in attendance, the only Drake _alive._ Jack Drake had been laid next to his wife, and now his son, so many years later, knelt in between them.

 

A watery smile made an attempt as he spoke. “I wonder if you would have been proud of me.” The earth yielded no response, but he continued. “I’m not Robin anymore, but I’m still doing good, I think. Everyone’s alive again, there’s that. You guys aren’t, though.” He wiped furiously at his eyes( _tears are useless but in the enhancement of a mask of grief, Timothy._ She’d never taught him how to deal with the real, agony, all-consuming reality of true emotion, thought he knew better than to feel. _)_ “Sometimes I wonder. If you were alive, where I would be.”

 

He gave a small smile, genuine this time. “Dick tells me that I should stop dwelling on the past so much. And maybe… I’m finally starting to see the future again. I miss you so much. But now I have a real family. I know you guys tried your best but… I finally know what it’s like to be loved. I wish that it could have come from you, but I wouldn’t ever change what I have now. I- I love you. I wish you were really here the first time I said that” he gave a weak chuckle as his fingers dug into the soil, “but then again, life is not kind.”

 

His eyelashes were heavy with rain and tears, yet he lifted them, eyes alighting on his family waiting for him with soft smiles and love in their eyes. Tim rose, taking a final look at parents’ grave. “But maybe it can be,” he murmured, turning, walking over to the people he would give his life for, again and again, who waited for him with a warm embrace.

 

xxx

 

He ducked to avoid Dick’s hand coming to ruffle his hair, who instead got a handful of short, spiky locks, and a very angry Damian. Jason laughed as Damian tackled the unsuspecting man, as he shared a look with him over Alfred’s hot chocolate.

 

A sudden clap of thunder sounded, causing both Cass and Titus to jump up, Damian immediately relinquishing his older brother to see to his dog, as Cass casually wrapped her arms around his waist in her renewed attempts of secretly cuddling with him( and maybe, just maybe, because he needed it).

 

A warm, heavy weight settled on his shoulder, and Tim looked up, catching one of Bruce’s rare smiles, the ones he made for his children when he thought no one was looking.

 

And just as it began, the moment broke, as Jason shouted, “Heads up, B!” Bruce caught the object Jason had thrown on instinct( and a rather misplaced sense of trust in his son), followed by Alfred’s Eyebrow of Disapproval™ as he spilled his drink on his way to the floor. After being punched in the face by a configured Jack in the Box.

 

Tim muffled his laughter in Cassandra’s shaking hair(apparently not even ex-assassins could hide their giggles) as Jason shot out of his seat, racing out of the kitchen with a wild grin as Bruce chased after him.

 

Damian gave an indignant(and God forbid, _cute_ ) squeal as Dick draped himself across him, a man attempting to tame a demon with the power of his own hugs(and it would probably work).

 

Tim saw Jason sneak out of the window in the corner of his eye with a wink, and Bruce stomping back into the kitchen mumbling about Alfred’s enforced ‘family night’ rule.

 

Tim observed all of this, tucked into the warm embrace of his little sister, and the laughter of his family, and he couldn’t help but take off his mask, dropping the wandering little boy in a cold house, or the teenaged CEO of WE, and just  _be_ _Tim._

And who could begrudge him for that?

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to point out any mistakes( it is oneam and this is so unedited), all constructive criticism is welcome:)


End file.
